A Riot of Guitar and Voices

By Leilani Polk

Great art is sometimes spurred by great turmoil, and the summer of 2020 was a deep, dark well of such inspiration. So much so that it completely shifted the focus of a composition Steven Mackey had started working on for the New Jersey Symphony (NJSO)’s centennial concerts.  

The work was commissioned by the NJSO to be conducted by our own Music Director, Xian Zhang, who has held the same role in New Jersey since 2016 and will serve both orchestras concurrently until 2028. Mackey had the idea to compose a big chorus and orchestra piece, and reached out to Tracy K. Smith — the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States (2017–2019) and his then-colleague at Princeton University — to collaborate on the text. “We’d always talked about writing something together and then this opportunity arose,” he said. Their kids were also video game buddies during the COVID shutdowns, so they’d established a friendship outside of Princeton.  

But the celebratory nature of the piece shifted after videos of George Floyd’s murder went viral and the Black Lives Matter movement started gaining momentum. “‘I really need to write my response to this,’” Smith told Mackey when they met that summer to talk about it and start planning over coffee. “And I said, ‘Well, what’s your feeling about a white guy setting this?’ And she said, ‘That’s the way it should be, right? We gotta work together, we should be working together on this. I mean, not just you and me, Steve, but, throughout the university, throughout the state, throughout the country, white people and Black people need to be working together.’” The thing most important to Smith was that her lyrical contributions be performed by a Black female soloist. Mackey talked it over with Xian and she agreed, but she added her own condition: “‘Let’s also have you on the guitar, so the two of you are front and center — a duo working together.’” 

Xian had originally reached out to Mackey after she’d seen him perform Four Iconoclastic Episodes, his double concerto for guitar and violin, and was keen to see a new work that incorporated his guitar. With Smith’s choral poetry, it was transformed into a work that foregrounds race and resilience. According to Mackey’s program note, the first line by Smith is a personal statement that Mackey describes as setting up “the interplay between the personal and communal, the soloist and the chorus”: “Sometimes I feel / the Black in my heart / like a map / made of tar. You need / only part your lips / to mar what isn’t yours.” A series of six texts follow, tracing “a trajectory that culminates in positive affirmation and a celebration of hope, perseverance, commitment and community. The music aspires to honor that trajectory.” 

Mackey said what happens between the vocalist and guitarist is like a conversation, which ultimately brings the orchestra and chorus into the dialogue. “There’s a sense that, we’re in it together,” Mackey said. 

RIOT was premiered by Xian with the NJSO in April of 2023, featuring Mackey, mezzo-soprano Alicia Olatuja and the Princeton University Glee Club. That program was paired with Mozart. When Xian debuts the work with the Seattle Symphony to close the season, Mackey and Olatuja will reunite on stage, this time joined by the Seattle Symphony Chorale, and RIOT will be paired with Beethoven’s own epic choral work, the Ninth Symphony. See those concerts at Benaroya Hall from June 18–21. To read more about RIOT and the Ninth in the program notes, click here. 

Xian Zhang’s position is generously underwritten as the Harriet Overton Stimson Music Director. 

Music Director Xian Zhang is generously sponsored by Dr. and Mrs. Charles and Lisa Simonyi and an anonymous donor. 

Steven Mackey’s performances are generously sponsored by the James D. and Sherry Raisbeck Foundation. 

Performances of Xian Conducts Beethoven 9 are generously sponsored by the Nesholm Family Foundation.